"When everything else has gone from my brain ... what will be left, I believe, is topology: the dreaming memory of land as it lay this way and that."
Annie Dillard

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

A Little Life

It's difficult to know just what to say about Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life. It's not a little book, to be sure, and not easy to finish within the three weeks allotted by Fairfax County Library.

At times it was only the fact that I was 400 pages into it that made me keep reading. Not because it wasn't beautifully written and a page turner in the character-reveal rather than plot-reveal sense of the word — but because the characters must endure the endurable. (And somehow, most of the time, they do.)

The book grapples with big questions, some of the biggest. Why are we here? How do we find meaning? What are the limits of love?

It doesn't answer any of them, of course, but it makes us ponder them, and it makes us care about the characters who are pondering them. And that, as good fiction always reminds me, is what it's all about.

About Me

I’m a writer and editor, the author of "Parents Who Think Too Much" and a freelancer published everywhere from the "New York Times" to "Woman’s Day." I’ve been scribbling my thoughts in one tattered notebook or another for most of my life, but this blog is the first time I’ve gone public. I'm glad you've landed here, and I hope you visit often.